Free Arrival by Ryk Brown Page B

down and removed the small comm-set control pack from his utility belt on his pressure suit. After unplugging his own comm-set line, he handed it over to Jack.
    Jack plugged his comm-set into Will’s control pack and switched to the primary channel.
                    
    “The control panel here is dead! It got clobbered by flying debris during the last explosion,” Mac explained.
    “ You’re gonna have to get to the manual override unit inside the bulkhead to purge the compartment! ” Frank advised him.
    Another explosion rocked the ship as blue-white flames lashed out at Tony, instantly super-heating the skin of his pressure suit, transferring tremendous amounts of heat through the suit and onto Tony’s skin.
    Tony screamed in pain. “My arms!” Mac instinctively spun around and launched himself across the compartment toward Tony.
    The azure flames continued to whip toward Tony. He could feel the hairs on his arms singe inside his suit as he instinctively held them out in front of his face. He was hit hard on his left side by something big and bulky flying across the room. He thought he was dead until he realized it was Mac knocking him out of the path of the flames. They both flew across the room, striking the forward bulkhead.
    Mac grabbed the open hatchway ring to keep them from bouncing off the wall and back into the flames. Regaining control of his body in the freedom of zero gravity, he maneuvered himself through the hatchway and into the midship airlock, dragging Tony along behind him.
                    
    “The fire has ruptured the secondary fuel transfer lines!” Frank exclaimed. “We’ll lose our main engines in two minutes, max!” Frank immediately tried to shut down the entire fuel transfer system—valves, pumps, the works. But nothing worked. “The main control umbilical must be damaged!” he added. “I’m still getting data, but nothing in the Icarus is responding to my commands! All we’ve got are the flight controls!”
    “ Frank, this is Jack! Can you hear me? ”
    “Jack!” Frank responded, relieved to hear his friend’s voice again.
                    
    Mac secured himself to one of the vertical handrails with the large carabiner on his utility belt. “I’m gonna blow the airlock before the whole damn ship goes up!” Mac announced as he attached Tony’s carabiner to the same handrail.
    “ Wait! Don’t do it! ” Jack cried over the comm-set.
    “ Mac! Don’t blow the hatch! If you do, all the compartment doors will automatically seal and they won’t be able to return to the LRV in time! ” 
    Flames surged through the hatchway from the galley into the midship airlock. In seconds, the fire devoured most of the oxygen in the galley and was now searching for more in neighboring compartments. In a few more seconds, it would find Mac and Tony, and consume them as well.
    Mac reached out and slapped the emergency hatch-blow button. The lights in the midship airlock compartment instantly turned red, and small warning strobe lights flashed, warning them of the impending decompression. In each adjoining compartment with open hatches, the lights turned red and their strobes began to flash as well.
    There was a five-second delay built into the system to allow the person activating it to brace themselves. Mac reached up and pulled the pin out of the automatic hatch closure mechanism on the galley hatch to prevent it from closing automatically. He had heard Frank warning him not to do it but Frank wasn’t down here amongst the flames, about to be burned alive. It was decompression or death. They could deal with getting back to the LRV after they survived decompression. Through the roar of the fire, Mac and Tony couldn’t hear the sound of hatches closing in the distance.
                    
    Jack and Will heard a loud clang from the access tube at the forward end of the pod bay.
    “What was that?” Will wondered, turning